Category: tv

Way back in the far away year 2008 Alan Ball worked to adapt Charlene Harris’ Southern Vampire Mystery series of books into a TV show. That sort of thing happens all the time. What doesn’t happen all the time is the start of one of the most interesting (for certain special values) and best (for other certain special values) TV shows ever created. So let us discuss the magic that is True Blood.

The first season of True Blood floundered like many shows do. They had a premise, and some good ideas taken from the novels along with their own takes on character and plot and they charged fully ahead. But it didn’t gel yet. It was just sort of there. Blood, gore, boobs and vampires. That was what it had. But what it would have was much stranger indeed.
Once season two came along the show had a very subtle shift. Somewhere between seasons one and two they creators realized that they were making the Worst Show Ever. Now, you need to understand what I mean by that. There are so many shows that are worse. But in this case Worst Show Ever isn’t a testament to the quality but rather the special mix of cheese, goofiness and loose plot along with shifting characters that makes a show immensely watchable while also being something that you sort of don’t want to watch. It’s compelling, funny, TV that manages to be trashy TV as much as it is fantastic TV. That sort of strange brew doesn’t happen often.

In fact, over the years, many shows would try to duplicate the mix and none of them would get it right – ending only with shows that are unwatchable and often dull.

True Blood reigned for a few years. They were unafraid to go anywhere and, rather quickly as these things go, they did the impossible. They became The Shark. We accuse shows of “Jumping the shark” all the time, meaning the time a show uses a gimmick that backfires for them and the quality of the show drops as a result. It is, almost always, an unrecoverable problem.

See, if you remove the problem to course correct it is obvious and your show is tainted and judged harsher for it. If you hold steady the problem will continue to drag you down. There’s no solution, outside of a very few edge cases. Jumping the shark, truly jumping it, makes a sound you can hear deep in your bones. It is the sound of death.

True Blood, on the other hand, became The Shark. It couldn’t ever jump the shark because it was, in and of itself, the shark they would have to jump.

Let me try to explain how that’s even possible:

True Blood became all gimmick. The boobs, the blood, the ridiculous plots – they were all gimmicks to be deployed. The way Eric, Pam or Lafayette spoke, sounding almost as if they came from a different writer’s room was a gimmick. The show became a battling beast of full on absurdity without loosing its watchablility and in doing so became the very thing it would take to jump over.
There was, they realized, no way to fail. They couldn’t jump themselves, after all, so all roads were open. You can see this most clearly in its greatest form, season 4’s next to last episode in which (and please understand this is literally what happens) the vampires need to get into a store where their friends are being held hostage by a witch. Except there is magic around it to prevent them from going in.

And so the vampires bring out a bazooka and try that.
Yes. A bazooka. Because on True Blood, the vampires will try large munitions against magic, because why wouldn’t you try that?

This is what I mean by the show became The Shark. It was a force of nature. Unstoppable. So the question became where do we go from here? How could the show continue to top itself, and continue to do what nothing else was, or could, do?

Season five tried out a new approach – let’s slow way down and leave a lot of what made the show work behind. When all else fails, try to through the engines in reverse while moving at speed. It won’t be pretty but it sure will be different!

But it doesn’t make great TV. The show hadn’t jumped the shark but it worked to figure out what made its own body tick by breaking its own legs. Not quite happy with that the show went on to season six to try something else different.

And this is where everything gets interesting. Season six was about as much of a mess as season five but in yet a different way. And that’s fine and they were still exploring the mechanics of their body destructively. But then at the end of season six we learned season seven would be the last.

And it is in one scene in season six we find out that they are planning the most daring thing of all.

Thirty minutes into the final episode of the season two key events happen: Eric catches fire while nude, and we see his penis. Understand both parts of that are critically important. Since season one Eric had been the standard of the show. He was what every vampire wanted to be: In Eric Northman we had the culmination of the shows sex drive, its love of gore and vampires and its sense of humor. Eric was the key to the show while Bill was the Man Who Would Be King – something else seasons ix went out of its way to prove as Bill becomes the worst God you could imagine. He’s never going to be as great as Eric, and the show needs you to know this.

Thus we come to Eric’s Flaming Penis. As the show’s standard for sex and horror – seeing Eric’s penis on screen was a signal. It was the payoff to six years of showing us all the boobs and butts we could want but holding back this one specific thing. And in showing us, they also set it on fire. Literally.

The symbolism is impossible to ignore – here is what you want, now watch it burn. It was a declaration of where the show would go and what it would try to do.

The show then jumps forward six months. Consider that in season four they jumped forward almost a full year and didn’t change even half as much as they did in this six month jump and you realize they key here.

The word jump.
Season seven was True Blood’s last and they would carefully design it to do the impossible, to jump the shark. To jump themselves.

The season itself is a mix of flashbacks to before the show started along with taking place six months after the events of season six. It is both backwards and forwards. The only way to jump yourself is to twist as hard as possible and loop around. The show tries this within its own structure but it doesn’t stop there.

Because they saw that the only way to jump the shark, for this show, was to ignore their own characters like never before. The use a gimmick. To make that gimmick itself ignoring the characters while dwelling on their pasts. It showed us that even while they would happily remember the smallest detail of plots past, they refused to pay attention to the characters they built. That’s not a mistake a show that has been this oddly careful makes. This was on purpose.

The number of character moments in season seven that flat out make no sense is staggering. It’s events for the sake of having events. Its plots that sound like maybe they might work on paper being brought to life as wobbly as possible. It is, in essence, the shitiest form of fanfic.

There’s your gimmick. There’s your jump.

They pulled off the one trick they hadn’t done yet on the show – they ruined their own show carefully and deliberately in ways you could watch it happen and understand they were having fun doing it. Their last magic trick was their greatest – setting fire to the stage they stood on, and laughing as they didn’t burn, only kept walking forward.

And the end of the show? After characters get married who showed good reason in the past why they shouldn’t, after rebirths and logic breaks and even Eric (who lives and they don’t care about how or why because that doesn’t matter when you’re pulling this trick) reduced to useless right up until the end – they pull one final trick.

The end of the show has four key events –

Bill dies – finally accepting that he needs to, because he is not Eric.

Eric and Pam sell out – they now have money and prestige but are still shown to be very much like they were in the flashbacks for the season, a place they hate deeply and feel trapped by.

Sookie is pregnant – we never see the guy. Because the show knows it doesn’t matter. It never mattered.

Everyone else has Thanksgiving together peacefully – and this is the point. Before Bill came to Bon Temps Sookie’s life was fine (she was unliked by lots and stressed but nothing even close to where it would go). After he shows up her life becomes one giant clusterfuck after another, the world almost ends several times and everything goes to shit for everyone. Inside four years after he dies everyone else is happy and living a full life and building family.

And that is, in the end, the message of True Blood: Bill was really the fucking problem all along. They spent years quietly telling us this and in the end felt the need to make their final, most audacious triumph of all – burning down their own house as messily as possible – just to show us that the guy who steps into the lives of our characters way back in episode one is the source of everything horrible, and thank god that’s over with.
And yet never forget, as the character who enters in episode one and has to meet these people Bill was our POV character all those years ago. Bill was us.

Bill. Was. Us. All. Along.

So yeah. True Blood was the Worst Show Ever in the best way possible. Even as it destroyed itself, it did so purposefully and wonderfully, that shit was textbook “What not to do” week after week as they came hurtling to a stop. And the in the end we’re left with a lingering sense that their message might really have been: We, the viewer, are why these poor guys can’t have nice things. While we watch their lives are shit. Now that we’re turning away for good, they can all be happy again.

So thanks, True Blood, for knowing when to hate, when to love, and most of all, when to be Kafka-esque in your absurdity so that we can spend two thousand words laughing about it.

All right look. Hurt isn’t playing the Valeyard but this comes into play.

Spoiler for the mini-episode “The Night Doctor” so watch that first I suppose.

…still here…? All right…

And… go!

The Valeyard comes between the 12th and 13th regeneration of the Doctor but is not considered the 12th or 13th regeneration. Just like the War!Doctor is not considered the Ninth. He comes between. Not in place of. Because it isn’t about the number of raw regenerations. IT never was.

See regeneration numbers are imposed limits by the Time Lords because, they claimed, too many and you go mad/fade away slowly/etc. Like, to be too referential here, wearing/keeping the One Ring too long. Butter spread across too much time vortex, as it were.

What it is about is how many of them are The Doctor.

Eleven so far. Soon to be Twelve.

But the War!Doctor isn’t a Doctor anymore than the Valeyard is/was/will be. That just isn’t how it works.

Also for the assuming that the Valeyard was kinda half his own thing and half the 13th Doctor, well we don’t know, that’s assumed, but why can’t we assume it this time, then?

Basically there is no reason or way to insist Eccleston is not the ninth Doctor unless you want to be pedantic and ignore the structure of the thing you are being pedantic about.

The times are changing. G.I. Joe and Cobra have both sufgfered huge losses in funding and recruitment. And now they have… new plans…
———————————“Hello! You used to know me as Cobra Commander! Yes! I plotted to take over your stupid countries with might and power. Of course I did! Wouldn’t you, if faced with the sort of sniveling weakness you yourselves display?

“Sadly there has been a downturn in recruits for my Cobra soldiers. As such I have been forced to reconsider our methods. So I am here today to announce that Cobra will no longer exist. Instead I shall use my army, my weapons and my masterful plans to help you get into the best shape of your life. Organically. Safely. Artistically!

“From here on out we are…. YOGA! Yes, so please address me as the Yoga Commander. My Yoga soldiers will help tone and stretch you. We will work together to ensure your peak physical conditioning, as well as spiritual growth!

“YOOOOGGGGAAAAAAAAAA!”

———————————

“Uhm. Hi. Excuse me. But don’t listen to Yoga Commander. He wants to train you in soft pliable ways to take over your mind and use you as his Downward Facing Army. Do not listen. Do not follow his lead. Do not trust him.

“Instead, come with me. I’m Duke. And while, as leader of G.I. Joe I commanded forces against the man you now call Yoga Commander, I, too, have seen a new day dawn.

“With that in mind, and our need to confront the forces of Yoga on their own terms, let me introduce you to G.I. Jazz! We’ll get you in shape the American Way! With sweat and hard work and possibly crying. You’ll cry, cadet! You’ll cry hard! Jazzercise on this level isn’t just for anyone!

“No, you have to prove yourself worth while to be a member of G.I. Jazz, but if you can, the world awaits you. Justice awaits. Say no to the forces of Yoga and sign up, today, with G.I. Jazz!

I was talking to a friend the other day (my The Glory, The Glory podcast co-host Aidan) and realized that New Girl is really something special on modern television. To really dig into why, though, we need to glance back at Sitcom Eras Past.

In the 50s and 60s (and please remember that decades and their trends don’t generally start until partway through. The 80s didn’t really start until 83/84) sitcoms often featured a lot of physical humor and exaggerated scenarios. I Love Lucy and Bewitched, I Dream of Genie and The Flying Nun. The sort of exaggerated event that made for broader comedy while still being nominally relatable – though at a remove because these were often blown out of proportion for comedy.

In the 70s the sitcom turned and we had shows like Taxi and Cheers who found comedy at the bottom of a well of depression. They would feature characters that felt stuck in their lives and sought humor from the base ridiculousness of existence in American society at the time. They loved a situation where they could get you to laugh with a character because you’d been there.

As we started to enter the cultural sinkhole of the 80s we found ourselves lashed at by sitcoms such as Family Ties, The Cosby Show, and Facts of Life which wanted us to remember that family was important and that good people came together to laugh and solve problems.

Bursting out of that, sitcoms in the 90s offered us Seinfeld and Friends, what I like to think of as the “It’s all right to be an ass” years. Characters could suddenly be truly unlikable and find their funny moments based off of us laughing directly at them instead of with them. We loved to dislike them, and they enjoyed our attention.

Which brings us back to New Girl:

Jess Day: The 50’s template, always living her life as if the world was brighter, sillier and bigger than it is. She can be as broad as a situation requires, without ever feeling out of place.

Nick: Reppin’ the 70s with is resignation that his life will be what it is. His personality being at least 40 years older than he is often helps ground him fully in the quagmire that is his imagined existence.

Winston: Though the writers seemed to struggle initially with Winston’s character he quickly became the quiet heart of the show from the 80s. You would think it was Jess, and yet Winston is often the glue that holds everyone together. He champions a sense of family, though not out loud often, that allows the others to work collectively though they might never realize it is his character and not themselves enabling it.

Schmidt: The 90s douche at its finest, complete with easy Douche Jar! We get to laugh at Schmidt, even though we know he isn’t a bad guy. He’s every character we loved to hate all wrapped up in one meta-textual, self-aware package.

And so New Girl becomes something on television that we haven’t quite seen before – a sitcom Voltron. It takes from every major era of the sitcom and combines them all to mix and match scenes and plots and find truly new ways to attack the old form.

It isn’t what I expected from the show back when I first started watching it, but with the alchemy in place and working and growing it is certainly what I watch now. From Cece shifting between the 90s and 50s with grace, to Julia Cleary being a quiet 90s character with the initial trappings of a 70s character being used to explore both Nick and, by a strange extension, his relationship with Schmidt, New Girl has found the ability to turn elements we knew into bursting unknowns, revealing their contents twenty-four minutes at a time.

I just realized that Heathers, yes the movie, fits really well into Game of Thrones. Yes, really. Think of it like this:

You have Heather Lannister, Heather Baratheon, and Heather Greyjoy and then poor Veronica Stark. Meanwhile everyone is afraid of the new kid Slater Targaryen. Now, I haven’t read ahead or anything but I really hope Veronica blows up King’s Landing.

Also I want to reshoot Heathers with Heather Lannister’s brother Tyrion involved.

But anyway! Yeah. Heather Stark moves to King’s Landing, and she hates it. It’s run by this clique of Heathers. Well, you know how this story goes. Slater is feared, he’s known as Dragon Boy, and hooks up with Ronnie. They manage to accidently kill Heather Baratheon (well Ronnie thinks it’s an accident at first) and now the wheels start to come off.

Also – late in the movie the God of Tits and Wine shows up.

But really, come on, admit this to yourself and to me – Heathers works as Game of Thrones far too well. Which really means that GoT is, quietly, just a teen romance black comedy disguised as something far bigger. But now you’ll never unsee it.

Shameful realization – I’ve never actually dug into the Jem cartoon here. I mean I’ve created a Scale of One to Jem. I’ve talked about the show some but I’ve never really given it the full on me it deserves.

That changes now! Synergy, hit it!

Jem was one of those shows that makes much more sense when you’re watching it as a kid than it ever will trying to think about it as an adult. But basically there’s this woman, Jerrica Benton. Why isn’t Jerrica a more popular name? It’s the female form of Jericho, like the “Walls Of” which were torn down by sound – come on that’s clever! Anyway her dad built this hologram thing to be ultra-cool and left it to her and so…

Get this – Jerrica runs a music company and uses Synergy, the hologram thing, to disguise herself as a rock star, that she then publishes. It’s like vanity press silly. She leverages all of this technology to basically wear a wig and put on make-up. Thanks, Jerrica, for squandering the greatest leap forward in holographic technology since… well who knows. Since holograms!

What’s funny now is, if you did this show today it would be called Gorillaz, and would be a documentary, in effect. But back them it was Jem. So she gets some folk together, her sister and foster sisters – so way to think outside your circle, Jerrica, and they form a band.

Jem and the Holograms.

Of course Jem was the Hologram. They were really themselves and didn’t pretend to be other people. But the name manages to imply the reverse. Jerrica Benton – Kind of a dick.

So they fight the Misfits, who are not the punk band you might be thinking of, but rather a band of people named Stomer and Pizzazz. Needless to say they were cooler than the so-called Holograms.

But anyway most of the show was Jerrica being all “No one can find out I’m also Jem.” See, I get that when Supergirl doesn’t want people to know her secret ID. I understand it when Spider-Man worries. Their families would be in danger.

When Jerrica does it I have to wonder what the issue is. What is she afraid of? Well. She’s afraid everyone would know she’s a fraud and has been squandering this technology and want to use it. Which is fair, because that’s what she’s doing. She basically has a secret identity because she’s kind of a dick and doesn’t want to be called on it.

It’s true.

Mind you this all ignores something. Fuck the hologram tech. Seriously – they also own the first true AI in Synergy. And she’s used to… help Jerrica’s music career. Christ, that’s the meaning of heartbreak. There Synergy is, brain the size of a planet and they ask her to take Jerrica to the stage. Call that job satisfaction? ‘Cause I don’t.

Jerrica Benton – worst person in the world? Possibly. Kimber totally should have punched her the fuck out and taken over. Maybe that was an unaired episode. I can hope.

Welcome to a new round of Dare the Internet to Make Me Do Stupid Things this time with guest-stupid-person Laszlo Xalieri!

You see, right now at Amazon the complete Dark Shadows is on sale. When I say “on sale” I mean $250 off reducing the price to a cheap $350 dollars. That’s $350 for, get this, 1225 thirty minute episodes. One thousand, two-hundred and twenty-five episodes. Holy crap. This set weighs like 15 lbs. and comes with 131 DVDs. It has 470 hours of TV. All of it is Dark Shadows. Look at this set:

This is where the stupid comes in. No one really wants to commit to watching that much Dark Shadows. Or owning it. Imagine the tears rolling down a cheek as another DVD case is lifted out, as Season Umpteenbillion rolls onward. No one should do this and consider that they may remain sane.

This is where you come in. Laszlo and I are willing to risk our very sanity for your amusement! We will each put in $50 bucks. That leaves $250 for you to donate. Here is a PayPal button:

What you get if we raise the money:

* We have to watch every single damned episode of Dark Shadows.

* We must try to do this before the end of 2015. We will do our best but there are 1,225 episodes so, you know, we may be a few weeks off target.

* I will write up every single season. Not every episode but at the end of each season watched I will write a review/article about it. Laszlo may also do his own article, but I will promise mine.

* The ability to ask me, at any time, what episode we’re on and get an answer, right then, with Season and Episode number, so that you can feel good about torturing me.

How long do we have to raise the money? 24 hours. If by 10AM on November 29th there is not the full amount, then we move on to some other thing to watch and hate ourselves for. Also the PayPal buttons are removed then.

What if we don’t raise quite enough money? Well, we will buy some horrible TV show or movies that we will then review and be tortured by. Choices will be made and maybe a run-off vote will be had should this come to pass.

What if the sale ends and the money is raised but now it is $250 dollars short? See the above. Basically you are ensuring we will torture ourselves watching something, we are just all “hoping” it is Dark Shadows.

So with Joss Whedon poised to do a S.H.I.E.L.D. TV show I figgered one good cost saving measure would be to reuse the Firefly theme and just change around the words some. Well, then I thought I’d be helpful, see, and do it for them. So, below, is the new S.H.I.E.L.D. theme:

Take my Cube, remake the land
Take me where only A.I.M. can stand
I don’t care, I’m still free
You can’t take Helicarriers from me.

Kill me off, try that tack
Tell them I ain’t comin’ back
Replace me with an LMD
You can’t take Helicarriers from me.

Leave my flyin’ car where it lay
It won’t never see another day
Lost clearance, blew the scheme
You can’t take Helicarriers from me.

I feel Hydra reaching out
And Zodiac’s song without a doubt
I still hear and I still see
You can’t take Helicarriers from me.

Lost sight of Dum-Dum Dugan
Howlin’ Commandos on the run.
There’s no place I can be
Since I’ve found Nick Fury.

I’ve seen a bunch of anger toward “posers” recently and I don’t get it. There are people getting mad because people are pretending to like something only because it is cool to like it, but they don’t really like it or get it. And that’s… bad?

How – that’s my problem – how is it bad?

If you like something you want it to do well, to succeed and thrive. More people spending money on it, talking about it, drawing focus to it bring that all home. They make the thing you love better funded and better accepted. They widen its base and spread it around.

But they don’t really like it, and so that’s bad.

Because the thing you like getting bigger is a horrible idea.

If you like something, if you truly enjoy it and want it to live, you want it to grow bigger. And that means more people looking at it. I don’t care if you somehow feel special because it is this little unknown thing in a closet just for you and your friends. That’s the way this shit dies early, by being kept hidden away. So – choose – do you want it to thrive or want it to fail? And if the answer is thrive then grow up!

Because according to you a “poser” is someone who is faking enjoyment of a thing. What you really mean is: They don’t enjoy it “enough” according to you, Grand Master Of How Much People Like Things.

I mean really. You wouldn’t want someone telling you you are enjoying things “wrong” would you? But you feel free to say it to other people.

“Oh no, this person here says they like Street Fighter but they don’t even know all the character names!”

Uhm. So the fuck what? You can like something and not obsess over it. You can like something and just, you know, like it.

You do not get to decide how much anyone else likes something, anymore than they can judge you for it.

Some people have to know every detail of a thing they like. Some don’t. It’s all fine! Look, me just kinda enjoying a thing you are hardcore into doesn’t weaken your enjoyment! It doesn’t make the thing you love any less of a thing. It just means I like it, but differently. And that is all right. It really is.

Deciding people are posers is elitist bullshit, the kind of stuff that most people outgrow around 7th grade. Get with it. Move along. Grow up. Let people enjoy things however much or little they enjoy them and understand it doesn’t affect your enjoyment of that thing one tiny bit. And then be thankful for the so-called posers – for helping that thing you love stay alive. Thank them! Your petty, twisted, selfish love isn’t enough.

These guys, the ones you think don’t care enough to obsess – they help a ton. Deal with it. And stop telling other people what they can and can’t like and how much they have to like something to be valid. Doing that is why we can’t have nice things. Seriously – you guys are the problem.

I like Sorkin. Well. I like his dialogue. Sometimes I like his plots. Some of his characters I enjoy. But I do love his cadence, the feel, I adore it. I am not as enamored of the man. Not by half. With his new show NEWSROOM starting tonight I wanted to get this out.

See the show is about, basically, how we have to re-elevate the news to a thing of glory. A bastion for smarts and truth and all that. And I agree. But Sorkin seems to think this can only happen on TV Network News. I disagree.

But to disagree with Sorkin, I wanted to do it on his terms. With a script.

INT. Hallway – Night.

Kevin and Lisa walk down the dimly lit hallway together, moving quickly. Kevin shuffles papers in his hands as he moves, almost as if he was searching for a cosmic order to put them in, a higher purpose in the relationship of one paper to the next. Lisa hugs a clipboard to her chest as if it were a security blanket.